Kremlin has Delayed Census Because It Fears What It Will Show, Nikolayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 4 –Vladimir Putin insisted on going ahead with a referendum despite the pandemic this past week, but he has postponed the decennial Russian census postponing the decennial Russian census supposedly for the same reason from this fall to next spring. But the real reasons are worse and more disturbing, economist Igor Nikolayev says.

The 2020 census had been long scheduled, although with the pandemic, there had been suggestions it would be delayed (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/because-of-coronavirus-russian-census.html). Now, Moscow has announced it will take place only in April (publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202006300014?index=0&rangeSize=1).

There is one reason for the delay that is connected with the pandemic, Nikolayev says. The census is supposed to be carried out largely paperless; and the delivery of some of the computer equipment the census takers need may have been delayed because of the coronavirus (echo.msk.ru/blog/nikolaev_i/2670191-echo/).

But neither that nor concern about the health of the Russian people is the main reason for the delay, he continues. Instead, the powers that be recognize that the results of the census won’t be good. They will show population decline, and unlike recent estimates of that, the census reports will attract widespread attention and spark debates. The powers don’t need or want that.

That puts them in an uncomfortable position, especially as they aren’t at least not yet to behave as Stalin did when the 1937 census showed results he didn’t like and the Soviet dictator had the results suppressed, a new census ordered two years later, and those who organized denounced and executed as “wreckers.” 

Those are not options for a hybrid regime, and so delay appears to be the least bad option. But of course, whenever the census is finally held – and it is not beyond imagining that it will be postponed yet again – it will show that the overall population is declining and the share of ethnic Russians in it is declining as well.